On Monday morning, March 10, 2014, at the conclusion of the Bridge Crossing Jubilee, a caravan sponsored by the SOS Coalition for Justice and Democracy will leave at 8:00 AM from the Edmund Pettus Bridge going to Washington D. C. to protest voter suppression and call for the restoration of the Voting Rights Act..

The Selma bridge is a symbol of the struggle for Voting Rights in 1965 that claimed the lives of Jimmie Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo, Rev. James Reeb, and Jonathan Daniels. The Voting Rights Act was passed in August 1965 as a result of the Selma movement. The sacrifices of these people and many others were minimized by the U.S. Supreme Court last year when it struck down Section 4, the pre-clearance provision, of the Act.

The Bridge Crossing Jubilee is held each year in Selma, on the first weekend in March to commemorate the events of “Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965 and includes 50 events from March 6 -9 including, workshops, a street fair, banquets and a march re-enactment on Sunday afternoon.

Local and national leaders will meet the Freedom Riders caravan and welcome them in rallies at the state capitols along the route. Rallies will be held Monday morning in Montgomery, Alabama and Monday afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia. On Tuesday morning a rally be held in Columbia, South Carolina and Tuesday afternoon in Raleigh, North Carolina. On Wednesday morning the caravan will be in Richmond, Virginia and by 2:00 PM will be in Washington, D. C. for a rally at the Supreme Court. The three day protest will culminate with a national rally at the US capitol on March 12, 2014, at 4:00 p.m.

The D.C. rally marks the beginning of yearlong voter registration drives across the country called, Marching to the 50th: 50 Cities/ 50 Cars/ 50 Voters At A Time. S.O.S. is sending out the call for all organizations and individuals committed to social justice in every city and state to participate. Every person is asked to register at least 50 voters in order to reach our goal of one million new voters by March 2015, the 50th Anniversary of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches.

Saving OurSelves (S.O.S.) Movement for Justice & Democracy is a network of 40+ organizations that organized in response to efforts that roll back civil rights reforms, block immigration reform, and other political and social efforts that threaten democracy and fair treatment under the law for the people in Alabama, the South and across the nation. S.O.S. is a grassroots movement of people waging campaigns to restore and maintain unfettered voting rights, which must be secured in order to protect labor, women, immigration, health and other vital rights that are essential to a just, democratic nation.